William Deresiewicz, an essayist and critic and the author of “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter”, wrote his strong opinion about how here in America, “we are in danger of confusing our palates with our souls.” By this ending statement to his essay he means that like art, “food is also a genuine passion that people like to share with their friends.” It has developed in late cultural as an apparatus, which emphasizes that food exists for art, “a whole literature of criticism, journalism, appreciation, memoir and theoretical debate.” It has its awards, its designers, along with televised performances. It has become a matter of local and national pride. He also states the evolution of how our culture has designated food becoming more enriched and accepted as art. “Just as aestheticism, the religion of art, inherited the position of Christianity among the progressive classes around the turn of the 20th century, so has foodism taken over from aestheticism around the turn of the 21st.”

In her essay, “What is Art For?”, Ellen Dissanayake wrote about how art transcended into being appreciated, evaluated and understood by the “high culture” in society. In the 18^th century, when postmodernism began to develop, high culture meant a culture of well-educated people who tapped into the human beauty sensors, and developed a better sense of aesthetic appreciation. Her evaluation of high-culture compares to how nowadays, appreciating, evaluating and understanding the creation of food has become a part of high culture. This type of appreciation is called “foodism”, stated by William, and the trend of art is now thought of in food masterpieces. William wrote, “food now expresses the symbolic values and absorbs the spiritual energies of the educated class.” It has become invested with the meaning of life. It is seen as the path to salvation, for the self and humanity both. However, after deep thought, food is officially not art. Both food and regular art begin by addressing the senses, but that is where food stops. It does not organize and express emotion all together. A cherry does not tell a tale, “even if we can tell a story about it.” Meals can evoke emotions, but only very generally, and only within a very limited range. Therefore, comfort, delight, perhaps nostalgia are involved, but food does not trigger anger, say, or sadness. Food is highly developed as a system of sensations.

Nobody cares if you know about Mozart or Leonardo anymore, but you had better be able to discuss the difference between ganache and couverture. William had stated that, “young men once headed to the Ivy League to acquire the patina of high culture that would allow them to move in the circles of power.” Now kids at elite schools of high culture are concerned for the ways of food–quality, type, and taste of food from different places, such as Manhattan or the San Francisco Bay Area. More and more of the young high-culture generation is trending towards the expressive possibilities of investments and careers in food. There are even many television shows, websites and plenty of other media involved in this foodism era, such as the cupcake shop, the pop-up restaurant, the high-end cookie business. Food, for young people now, is creativity, commerce, politics and health. Foodism appears to almost measure up to the importance of religion. After reading William’s essay, I have a deeper understanding of food versus art. It is no longer, “food and art”, therefore, they are two different subjects. This is all necessary and good transcendence of food, however, it is still not art.

Deresiewicz, William. (2012 October) “A Matter of Taste?” The New York Times. [The New York Times Company Web]. Retrieved Feb 1, 2014 from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/opinion/sunday/how-food-replaced-art-as-high-culture.html?_r=0

Yes, food can be a form of art. There is an argument whether fast food compared to slow cooked food is less artistic. In the two videos, “Fast food presentation” versus the “Slow food presentation”, the slow-cooked foods were described in an aesthetic manner, describing every step to the process of a pasta or a pizza to be cooked. Every piece of the recipes was described by textures and colors, along with the shape and style cookware that was used with the slow-cooked recipes. Whereas, in the “Fast food presesentation” video, the negative aspects of quickly prepared food were emphasized. The shipped and processed food was not described in an aesthetic manner. Therefore, food can be appreciated as art in certain dynamics. In the article, “Food as Art”, written by Elizabeth Telfer, she states that, “food and drink can of course produce aesthetic reactions, it cannot be an art for or produce works of art” (Telfer, 9). In order for food to be art, it must be expressed and appreciated. While Telfer argues that,  “because people have to eat [dishes] to appreciate them, and because each person necessarily eats a different part of the dish, it might seem that in the sphere of food no one can appreciate a complete works of art…” (Telfer, 17). T his means that carefully prepared dishes can be presented in an aesthetic way, but also, our taste buds evaluate what is good in flavor and what is not. Our ability to sense beauty or distaste in flavor makes food an art. Art is not always something you have to view in order to enjoy its beauty or lack of expression. Food is a form of expression. Whatever qualifies an artist should not be limited merely by sculptures, canvases, or engravings. We use our senses to detect what we believe is artistic: our hearing tells us what music is good, our eyes tell us what painting is astonishing, therefore, our taste can depict what flavor may please us.